The Look Of Confidence

I found it on this excellent site which showcases very old photographs. The description of the photo reads: “Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest. Note Social Security number tattooed on his arm.”

Despite this man’s pauper clothes (there was little peacocking during the Great Depression), his jobless status, his search for employment or food at a bean harvest, and his home made out of canvas, he wears the confident smirk and mischievous gaze of an alpha male. What does he have to be happy about? Oh, his attractive wife. And by 1939 standards she is a real hottie.

Shouldn’t he feel ashamed to be dragging her to a bean harvest? Most modern men couldn’t imagine taking their wives or girlfriends on a bean harvest date. It would be a massive DLV. Not only that, but he’s obviously proud of the Social Security number tattooed on his arm. This is one step above waving your food stamps in the air like a certificate of accomplishment. What could be more beta than tattooing the government’s ownage of you on your arm?

Self-satisfaction will see a man through all sorts of tribulations. Radiating confidence, deserved or irrational, is what is most attractive to women. This man looks confident, and his wife stands by him. She has the mousy, hunched over posture of a woman in love. All else that’s objectively negative about him fades to insignificance in the matter of what stirs her heart. In glaring contrast, today we have the spectacle of wives divorcing their dutiful husbands (70% divorces initiated by women) for the sin of catering to her every whim by being “economic partners, lovers, …co-parents and best friends. [A]lso each other’s co-workers, editors and primary readers.”

I have a new system for learning inner game — I call it bean harvest game. This is where you take a woman on a really shitty date, let’s say to a soup kitchen to pick up your rations for the week, and refuse to act apologetic or ashamed of your anti-signaling station in life. Instead, you carry your unemployment and poor taste with the confidence of a master of the universe. Handicapping yourself this way means you have no crutch to close the deal. Everything desirable about you must flow from your internal state. If this doesn’t sharpen your inner game and hone your ability to reframe, nothing will. Expect to be amazed how many women will still sleep with you after running tight bean harvest game on them.

Addendum: I find this picture oddly sensual. I’ve never wanted to bone a woman from the pre-airbrushing era so badly.

I’ve avoided that NYT article but now I’ll probably have to check it out. The premise sounds terrible though. Trying to improve/perfect a marriage that didn’t need help because you’re such an overachiever? Ugh.

Yes, she’s young (max. 22, I’d say), slim, feminine, and has a pretty face. There were a lot of pretty, feminine girls just like her back then. Now we have girls her age featured in sites like People of Walmart. Weep, weep for America!

Is this photo for real? They both seem to have a ‘nowadays’ look about them. People in photos from 50 years+ don’t just look the same way people do nowadays and vice versa (to do with more food I guess).

That NYT article has to be the hardest article I have read this year. The pacing of the story was awful and I lost respect for the guy right from the start. I have tried “starving artist game” in the past albeit on girls I really didn’t care about. I haven’t tried it lately but I have a funny feeling I may try it this weekend. The picture of the couple reminds me of how physically soft American’s have become today. I’m not sure how old the guy is but you can bet your ass he would run circles around men his age today. to my eye he looks to be a few years older than her. Clearly he had game. The woman is definitely a beauty as well thin, well with in her weight range, without a FUPA or wearing sweatpants with Ugg style boots on.

i spent a summer informing girls i was unemployed and living with my mom. i still got laid. it also meant they’d buy me a drink or two, or dinner outright. they had no expectations past that point b/c i had laid out my qualifications, well, lack thereof.

“Most modern men couldn’t imagine taking their wives or girlfriends on a bean harvest date”

would be damn original however.

“She has the mousy, hunched over posture of a woman in love.”

too true.

“All else that’s objectively negative about him fades to insignificance in the matter of what stirs her heart.”

ah..through the eyes of love. It comes down to character and the knowing that she has a man of substance for a husband. When considering someone for a serious relationship, as a woman, the only question I ask myself is “would I want, desire, enjoy (overall) staying on a deserted island for a stint of time with this guy?” All of the rest can be made and built.

This is a point I try to hit on all of the time: bean-harvest, starving artist, whatever you call it, game works. The best luck I had was one summer living at home unemployed. Now you usually have to have some BS line about “planning for the big goal”, or your “artistic passion”, but in the end a well adjusted and HAPPY unemployed guy will beat out a depressed dude with a job he hates. Obviously the best choice is a guy with great job he loves.

“And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men–to feel whether this time the men would break. After awhile the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, What’ll we do? And the men replied, I don’t know. But it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.”

They made a movie along these lines: “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” Actually, it was a rip off of an old French film, but that’s another story.

Nick Nolte’s character had outstanding indigent game, mooching off his benefactor while screwing the guy’s wife, maid/mistress, and daughter. Of course, even after his escapades were revealed, they all still loved him.

She may have the “hunched” posture habit because she’s taller than he. Even some tall men habitually hunch.

Other bean harvest dates: lunching with demented Grandma at her nursing home, visiting Uncle at his dilapidated home, an afternoon picking up other people’s strewn refuse. I think a women will respect a man who deals with other’s misfortunes shamelessly, but not want to invest herself in his direct misfortunes.

The man looks like the British actor Ronald Colman, who was well known at the time. Looking like a movie star may give a man an extra dose of confidence and make him more attractive to women — though the man seems to have plenty of confidence all on his own. Also, social security numbers were not possessed by everyone in 1939. Certain categories of workers did not fall under the system. I am not sure where to find the information on this, but I believe that people who were self-employed, farm laborers, and those who worked in restaurants as waiters and the like did not have accounts. So, the SS number might have been an indication that the man was qualified for higher-status employment, even though the man was unemployed when the photo was made.

Not sure about the other parts of the country, or world, but in L.A. bean harvest dates are as simple as driving a very bland, old and unspectacular car.

My car is 11-years-old, it has 4 cylinders and ugly cloth seats. It blends into the car crowd and it’s guaranteed not to get a chick’s heart pumping. Why do I drive it? I have no need to motorize about in a 2-ton penis and I prefer to keep most of my money rather than fork it out to banks and car companies. Bean harvest is alive and well in this day age.

PS – Yes, the wife looks like she’s ready to do some “harvesting” doesn’t she? I’d be first in line with my hose buddy!

people in this country in general were of better character when it was poorer. maybe it was because familes were closer to their agricultural origins and that ethic of hard work and self-sufficiency. mass prosperity always seems to undermine morals and social cohesion, leading to decadence. off-point, perhaps, but that’s what this photo brings to mind for me. this guy is not picking beans to impress his wife or anyone else – “starving artist game” is the modern decadent play-acting version of that, like marie antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess. he was picking beans so he could eat and feed his family. the fact that he could do so with an attitude of dignity and confidence is testament to his character, or, uh, “inner game”. which is the point in the end, i guess.

The link to the NYTimes article highlights the modern marriage from a woman’s point of view:

“…with a spouse, particularly a contemporary American spouse, equality is foundational, assumed. A friend had recently told me that he thought I was the boss in my marriage. Did I really want to negotiate my marriage anew and risk losing that power?”

“This is where you take a woman on a really shitty date, let’s say to a soup kitchen to pick up your rations for the week, and refuse to act apologetic or ashamed of your anti-signaling station in life.”………..

Me and a male friend did this once when we were going through financially hard times. We were out and about, hungry, and drove by the food bank and we came back to the parking lot with 6 bags of groceries and sat in the car eating.

It was spontaneous, fun and a funny/cute memory for us.

Much more fun than sitting in some overly priced, stuffy restaurant eating food that has the same amount of chemicals in it as the food bank food. Plus we both had groceries to take home and get us by for the rest of the week.

She’s beautiful, loyal and somewhat sad. You don’t get wives like that too often with all of that. You get divorce. And we can call that the 70% rule.

And in 1939 this country was heading into war and the government was creating lots of manual labor work. He wasn’t going to be unemployed for long. Most likely, he would be entering the military.

Today, we have a power starved State looking to amass as much power as possible and could care less about the average working man other than to confuse and have him believe socialist lies at election time to maintain and expand greater powers of the State.

And you have Hillary Clinton’s pollster getting millions, millions in stimulus money. This guy Penn is said to have gotten $6 million.

A trillion dollars blown and where are the jobs? There weren’t jobs because it was a scam all the time. Example A: Mr. Penn and his million dollar booty. The first of many some will hear about, and the vast media will ignore as they have done to this point.

Every man likes to believe that through thick and thin his wife will stand by him. That’s about as archaic as this photo.

I was going to say that is seems our anscestors were a better breed of human than modern Americans. But, yeah, decadence breeds character decay which breeds societal collapse or change, that about sums it up.

This guys just is – no conscious games. He is the man, she is the woman. He has to pick beans so he picks beans. She is the wife so she goes along. His way is her way. Seamless.

In case younger, more gullible readers don’t catch on, they weren’t going on a date, they had gone to the bean harvest looking for work, picking beans.

If you go to the original site, some people used the SSN on his arm to trace some of his records.

Most likely he was _27_ when the picture taken. Given that birth records were not necessarily meticulously kept everywhere back then he might be a year or two older. He does look great all thigs considered, but try to tell me that’s not a hard ridden 27 years old, I would have guessed at least 32 maybe up to 37…

When he enlisted in the army in 1942 (served until 1946) he listed his status as divorced with dependents. No way of knowing if the woman in the pic was the one he divorced or his (second?) wife Ann (or if they broke up or got together again). Also note that common law arrangements weren’t uncommon back then since getting married and divorced cost money many didn’t or couldn’t expend. At any rate he and Ann, four years his junior, stayed together until his death at 67 in 1980. She survived another 20 years.

The woman’s posture is one that will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time looking at old magazines or movies. It seems to have disappeared between now and then.

There’s another picture in the comments at Shorpy that’s not quite as arresting as this one. He looks maybe a little younger in it and she looks a little older than she does here.

He does look a little like Ronald Coleman, and a little less like Errol Flynn, but I’d say the look he’s going for is definitely Clark Gable.

This was my dating method in my early L.A. days, but not because I thought it would help my game. It was simply a case of every nickel I had going to music gear and band rehearsal studios, rather than “entertainment.”

Girls dating a young Riff Dog never saw the inside of a restaurant. Not even McDonald’s. A deluxe date would be going to a club where a friend’s band was playing and he’d put us on the guest list. Even then, my date could count on the absolute minimum number of drinks the club would require me to buy.

Amazingly (or as we now understand, not so amazingly,) girls would keep dating me. They might complain occasionally, but they knew the situation was non-negotiable and they kept coming back for more. One such girl became my wife.

I agree with you on that woman in the picture, by the way. There’s something very alluring about her.

I know what you mean about some of these women in old photos. I bought a German photo book called Deutsche Akte a few years back and fell in love with the two blonde Aryan women they had frolicking nude on the beach in color photos on a place like Sylt or Helgoland. The blonde, blue eyed women against the yellow sand and blue water of the North sea and sky reinforced one another. These were photos from the mid 30s. They are all very cool in their own right as well. I am still in love with the one girls in those photos. Fortunately, my wife looks a lot like her, so I’m a happy man in my dotage.

I also made a photo album of some old family photos I had laying around and several were of a good friend of my great aunt’s, who was a really cool woman too. Same deal, I really wanted to meet her and connect with her. She just had this magentic pull for me. This woman in the photo you discuss is also hot. She’s a natural beauty.

Anyway, my old college roommmate, Bill (Bodo) Peitsch, from1981 and 1982, God rest his soul, also espoused bean harvest game and was rather successful of it. To get a feel for who Bill was, see a web site called Wayne County Rambling. Bill was a natural and I learned a lot from him at a tender age that has served me well over the years.

If the US had had intelligent economic policies in those days, there would never have been a depression and this fellow would not have been out of work. Therein lies the rub. Your generation will have to learn it the hard way it seems. After four years of Carter, Reagan seemed like he had been heavensent. These are the worst times I’ve seen since Carter in terms of unemployment. At least we don’t have 15% mortgage rates yet.

Man, you guys have active imaginations. This woman simply looks depressed and beaten down to me. More of a look of resignation, than a look of “desire”. He, on the other hand, looks quite content with himself.

“Thanks for bursting the bubble of all the boyz here who were fantasizing that this “man’s man” had a woman stick by him for his entire life.”

It’s not an illusion. The Shorpy site has a picture of a shared headstone(?) ‘Together Forever’. It’s probable that he spent a lot (or most) of his life happily married. We just don’t know if this is Ann or not.

On the other hand, I try to imagine our host (or most of the regulars here) following the bean harvest so they won’t starve to death and enlisting at age 30 in the army to defend their country …… I’m failing.

Actually, the SSN tattoo is pretty alpha. My friend’s grandpa used to have his initials and SSN tattooed on each arm in case he was crushed in a coal mine and that’s all they could find of him. Clearly this dude has embraced the fact that he might be dismembered at some point, but he’s still cool as a cucumber.

Social security number tatted on his arm, huh? So at the risk of being a thread jacking troll I must ask, would you all have advocated cutting off all forms of social assistance to this guy, his wife, and children and letting them starve to death to lower your taxes/lower the federal deficit/weed their “inferior” alleles out of the gene pool or whatever?

Wow . Stunning contrast of both masculine and feminine beauty. What men took for granted with dresses and women who were not fatties. I would rather be in that tent instead of her 25 pounds more poured into a pair of jeans in a Mcmansion

I must ask, would you all have advocated cutting off all forms of social assistance to this guy, his wife, and children and letting them starve to death to lower your taxes/lower the federal deficit/weed their “inferior” alleles out of the gene pool or whatever?

lovelysexybeauty wrote: “But why such STRONG desire toward her? If you didn’t notice him first, would you have merely looked at her as “Oh she’s cute” vs. ‘I really want to b*ng her bad?’”

Attractive women are feminine women, and their presence makes men feel more masculine. The man in the photo has a strong masculine presence, so the contrast between his masculinity and her femininity is high, which makes her seem more feminine, and thus more attractive.

Also, men aspire to masculinity and admire it in others, so viewing the masculine man makes male viewers feel more masculine. (This isn’t necessarily true if a more masculine man is a direct competitor in the same room as the viewer.) When men feel more masculine, they feel more desire for allmost any woman. Since the woman in the photo is the woman they are looking at while they are feeling more masculine, male viewers associate their increased feeling of masculinity with her femininity, which makes her more attractive.

…“starving artist game” is the modern decadent play-acting version of that, like marie antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess. he was picking beans so he could eat and feed his family. the fact that he could do so with an attitude of dignity and confidence is testament to his character

@maurice : “he was picking beans so he could eat and feed his family.”

To be fair, I’m sure she was picking beans too. The idea that she would lounge around the threadbare tent to greet him when he got back is not … realistic. The only reason she wouldn’t have been picking beans (if she was quality) would be if they weren’t hiring women or she had some other job. If she was lounging around the tent, dirt and uncovered mattress then I bet she’s the one he divorced.

The woman in the picture is hunched over because she’s fucking depressed to be sleeping on a thin, dirty mattress placed directly on the ground, to have just had a cup of hot water for breakfast and to have a husband who seems just fine with this miserable life and probably won’t work hard enough to pull them out of it.

Crop that cocky dude out of the picture, and the woman looks just plain sad, with a hint of resentfulness toward the photographer for taking her picture in her shameful state.

Two Brooklyn Romance language teachers were allegedly caught practicing another type of romance in a school classroom. According to the New York Daily News, Alini Brito, 29, and Cindy Mauro, 33, were discovered “undressed” by a janitor at James Madison High School in Midwood.

The school’s students were at an assembly while the two teachers were allegedly doing extracurricular activities. The married Brito and Mauro are both being investigated for misconduct. Students at the school have set up a Facebook page in response to the incident.

””””””’on December 9, 2009 at 2:51 pm Cliff Arroyo
@maurice : “he was picking beans so he could eat and feed his family.”

To be fair, I’m sure she was picking beans too. The idea that she would lounge around the threadbare tent to greet him when he got back is not … realistic. The only reason she wouldn’t have been picking beans (if she was quality) would be if they weren’t hiring women or she had some other job. If she was lounging around the tent, dirt and uncovered mattress then I bet she’s the one he divorced.”””””””””””””’

This is what people don’t get. Her ass would be out there picking the fucking beans too but yea I see that shit all the time during harvest back home. People living in tents with families too. Yea people look like they are ok with life because they know everyone else going through the same struggle to live. No free lunches for some and others get screwed.

Ye gods, that article was a pain in the ass to read. Let’s see, a reader’s digest to save someone else the pain of shifting through the rubbish:

“Hi, I’m a nondescript bundle of issues and insecurities, and today I’m going to tell you all about how much my marriage sucks due to everyone else’s faults and none of my own. In the following six (!!) chapters I will let my verbal diarrhea run wild and I will:

– Explain how I was scared shitless by the prospect of actually trying to improve my marriage and do some work on it. I shouldn’t need to do anything.

– Tell you over and over how much I resent my husband for criticizing my kissing, even though I hate kissing and thus I suck at it. By criticizing I mean he said something once and I never forgave him, ever. I’ll bring it up repeatedly to drive the point home, nagging in a way only a woman can. I never bring it up directly to him, however.

– Blame his cooking for everything, from our miserable marriage to our money problems. For a whole fucking chapter. I will complain about our double-income and how it disappears with his extravagant cookery. I will ignore the fact that we really don’t have a double income because, if this article is a good example of how I write all the time, there’s no way in hell I can be bringing much more than chump change home with my labour.

– Make an extremely lengthy and shaky rationalization about how unreasonable my husband’s expectations are and how demented he can be because I expect him to spend his vacation time every year with my parents, whereas I refuse to even acknowledge his (ew, they’re icky, and my parents are perfect!).

– Put there in the open for everyone to see how many issues I have with intimacy. This chapter will dart all over the place and will be a pain in the ass to follow, because I’m confused, and confused women do that. Oh, and I’m sick of hearing about my husband’s pre-marital sexual adventures, because I’m a saint and I hate them harlots. All those former lovers I kept pictures of and invited to our wedding (without explanation to my husband) don’t count. Nuh-huh, no no no. I don’t see why he has to be so hostile about them, I’d never be like that about his previous life. This obvious contradiction I’ve just written will be completely lost on me.

By the end of it you’ll have concluded that:

– I’m a very empty person with little to offer.
– I resent my husband for being a better person than I am, so I’ve tried for years to stifle everything about him that may show it. This whole marital therapy kinda exposed all that again, so it obviously sucked.
– All the therapy is wrong because none of it worked. It never occurred to me that I may have to change something myself.

Oh, and I’ll fill the whole article with random paragraphs about this or that psychology book (as opposed to brief quotes when appropriate) just to show how much I’ve read and how much I know, because I’m insecure and need validation by showing off like that.”

Shit, even the shortened version is way too long than it should be for how little she says.

A little late, but… To quote Scarface: “All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don’t break them for no one.”

P.S. Read the NYT article, sucks donkey dung. Am getting divorced because my wife wanted to go to counseling over such whining-ass shit and I told her no f*cking way (get diagnosed as something bad, be told men suck and encouraged to get divorced anyway, hell no!)… much happier now. Should’ve stuck with strippers.

Nice post. Please pick apart that NY Times article, I would love to see you rip it to shreds. I’d start with the slutty look on the wife’s face in the initial photo, a strawberry colored red queen issuing forth her fertile invitation to all greater betas and lesser alphas. It’s totally obvious: she longs to be put in her place.

This isn’t going to work on a decent woman. You could easily impress them at the soup kitchen with your confidence, but their girlfriends and peers can’t see that confidence. When your date tells her friends about you, they’ll all laugh and lower your perceived value tremendously. Her father may try to order her not to see you again. Is your game good enough to counteract all that? It may be, but being less of a loser would probably go a looong way.

Of course if you’re in the middle of a great depression, things are different. Lots of people lost their jobs through no fault of their own, so it wasn’t nearly as much of a status-killer.

I’ve told girls their SOs were losers before, based on objective criteria. They never defend them with any gusto, although this could be because they see me as more alpha than their SOs.

I agree with lena that the couple got their picture taken because they are attractive. For all we know the photographer put them in that pose.

The great newspaper editor Harold Evans wrote a book called “Pictures on the Page”, an introduction to photojournalism and still probably the best book on the subject.

On the back jacket was a photo of a young woman at the poolside. She’s kneeling over the body of her boyfriend, who has drowned. She’s looking at the camera. Harry Evans’s caption is: “WHY IS THIS WOMAN SMILING?”

The answer? Because she’s being photographed. Time was when being photographed was unusual. The instinct was to smile for the camera. Meant nothing about the real frame of mind of the subject.

You could read 1,001 interpretations of that — or any other — picture and they’d all be valid. There’s no truth in people pix, only interpretations. Mine would be: he’s a handsome man putting on a brave face for the camera; she’s on the edge of despair and not so sure she’s in the frame.

The man has a nice body, a little hairy for my taste but certainly not bad.

You could also ask her to come down to a soup kitchen and where the two of you will volunteer together. If she refuses for BS reasons, run like hell. You have a selfish woman on your hands who will make an awful wife and worse mother.

The only problem with your scenario is that the majority of the American people were in the same lowly condition as these two depression era lovebirds. There was no vast inequality of wealth distribution as we find in 2009 America. You’re also forgetting 1939 was pre-feminist cunt America whereby women generally stood by their men regardless of their station in life and knew their role. Similarly, white men were allowed to be men and weren’t demonized and pilloried practically from birth.

Even if you’re not uber confident, being with a real women who accepts your shortcomings is invigorating and confidence building. Today’s dating game is like Darwinism in the extreme where women bolt (or their gina freezes) at the first sign of human frailty in a man.

Personally it looks like the guy in the photo needs to unload a serious bowl movement based on his posture and facial expression.

I couldn’t get past page two of that friggin’ NYT article; ye gods, what yammering!

I tend to agree with the recent comments about the fellow smiling for the benefit of the camera. I have posed family photos from the late 1800’s-early 1900’s, and NO ONE is smiling…. because photography was too young and no one knew what you were “supposed” to do when faced with a camera. By the 1930’s, photography was more universal and people had developed a learned response to the presence of a camera.

Regardless, he’s still a good-looking guy who projected a confident aura for the camera. Clearly an alpha, regardless of societal conditions around him.

The woman doesnt look despairing to me, she looks discomfited by being photo’d and maybe even by just having a stranger there. Why is she holding her shin just above the ankle, this is a nervous gesture not a despairing one. She may be trying to smile but cant really, because she is anxiously irritated.

She may have a light anxiety/depression not dependent on the economic situation (odds are shes been living this way a long time, its nothing new). Or she might just be really shy and over-responsive to stimuli.

The smirk & cigar are pure alph, I think the tatt’d SSN is a (approaching alpha) sign of the times. I’ve been told that gov’t back in the day was something to be proud of. This alpha was “recognized” by a system that did more good than bad. He was part of the solution, by the way he is holding himself, he is proud to show it…

.. he just might be lucky to have her at that point in time .. I would like to know what happened in the ensuing years ..

Lots of guys can be fearless simply because they are too moronic to see the truth or have been lucky enough to not face bad situations ever. This is typical in young men and young women are particularly fooled by this. What is truly impressive is seeing fearlessness in older experienced men .. They have seen all the dangers and been through shit .. and they are unfazed by it all. THAT is true alpha.

Too much overconfidence might get you stray pussy guys and is probably good for REPLICATION, but living in a cold indifferent massively connected truly autonomous world being way off base with regards to reality is not good for SURVIVAL.

It is a very good picture in that it portrays exactly what she discusses. However, I think it looks too good. It reminds me of garden-variety 1930s Marxists propaganda.

“The heroic, brawny common working man and his worthy female.”

That woman looks too well cared for. Men and women who really did stoop farm work outside in the weather in that era aged with tragic alacrity.
They are both just too perfect an image to fit with the 1930s reality of being unemployed and living in a tent. I call it a staged photo by a Red Sympathizer.

Sounds to me like Wilbur Simonson is full of shit. Probably been reading to much Freudian psychobabble.

I don’t find the woman attractive but I think what gets people is her eyes. They are deep with emotion. All photos of women today seem superficial and staged so a photo with true authenticity of expression is going to seem more attractive.

I have an old painting of a half naked chick that one of my old man’s friends found cleaning out his elderly mother’s shed. I have no idea who the chick is but she is captivating and it has nothing to do with any increases in masculinity by any shirtless guys that might be around. What is captivating is her facial expression. It is deep and full of emotion, something that is rare with women today.

A chick friend of mine used to have deep green eyes that drove guys wild. I once overheard a guy in the pub say she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A gross overstatement. But the first time I saw this chick, in class, she was recovering from trauma and it was reflected in her face and made her breathtaking. And before Wilbur Simonson asks, that class was only a handful of betas.

My point is this: Masculine presence does not make a chick appear more attractive to other men and is certainly not the case in this situation. What is captivating all the guys about the chick in the picture is that she has depth to her soul (probably due to living a hard life) that is reflected in her facial expression, and particularly her eyes, and that depth of emotion is something that is missing from most women today.

This woman appears to have married a low achieving man who married an achiever female, who makes as much as he dose. A man who is satisfied when his wife makes as much as he does is a low achiever in my book. Good for him. Bad for her. I suppose she isn’t divorcing him because it would not be financially lucrative for her, and who knows who would get the kids? She might wind up paying child support. He seems to be playing his cards well. Getting in shape might help him snag some extracurricular pussy. Married to that neurotic woman, it would only be right.

Of course, she is a professional writer, so, this article could just be all made up to sell to the NY Times.

I agree with his critics about this picture. That guy looks like an asshole to me, and the woman looks desperate. Back in those days poverty was real (no food stamps or welfare or free health care) and jobs and education for women were limited. Women definitely married with financial considerations given great weight. Her social status and living standard, and that of her children, depended entirely on her husband. Imagine how she is seeing her present and future.

Reminds me of my cousin Georgie, who was good looking and alpha (like his father, actually, who died relatively young from smoking). He was the only member of my family to make the evening NYC news, when he and his girlfriend (he had a wife and five kids for whom he paid no support) were found dead in a hotel room in NYC, probably accidental drug overdose. That was big news back in those days.

I notice a real shift in my son’s generation of upper middle class men. The men are delaying marriage, and not marrying “frivolous” girls or those they will have to support. Two of his friends just broke off with girls who were beautiful but “frivolous.” None of the girls in his generation have “married up.” Ladies, you made this bed. Now lie in it.

What has this to do with game? For men, it suggests gaming is preferable to being married. Learn game or wind up married or celibate. (I won’t mention an obvious alternative on this family oriented site. It involves money but a lot less than marriage.) That should stiffen their resolve.

A good friend of mine had no money for a long time yet he went on more dates than my other friends combined. He’d ask a girl on a date, take her to a nearby bar for the date. He’d ask her what she wanted to drink. He’d go to the bartender , pay for the drink in a heap of coins and give her the drink. If she asked where his was he’d say he wasn’t thirsty, or she’d get the next round. He banged many girls, more than most people I know. Poverty, location, didn’t matter, he was never fazed, still isn’t.

I don’t see why anyone here is pissed off over that NYPost piece about marriage.

She was a woman who loved her husband enough to want to improve their marriage. The only fault I see in the piece was that there was nothing much to improve – they had a good marriage to begin with.

Trying to re-create the same amount of romance and passion you felt when you first fell in love is silly. That’s not even what marriage is about – romance and passion.

So she finally came to that realization in the end where she wrote;

“In the early years, we take our marriages to be vehicles for wish fulfillment: we get the mate, maybe even a house, an end to loneliness, some kids. But to keep expecting our marriages to fulfill our desires — to bring us the unending happiness or passion or intimacy or stability we crave — and to measure our unions by their capacity to satisfy those longings, is naïve, even demeaning.”

Marriage is not meant to fulfill all of our deepest longings. Marriage is meant to be a sort of socie-economic alliance for the sake of children, future generations.

This silly fantasy of “soul mate” and the rest is the current bane of civilization as we know it.

Her marriage was just fine, as are probably thousands of others that nonetheless come to an end because the people involved nurse spoiled teenage fantasies well into their adult years.

The photo is excellent, and it goes beyond any kind of “game” or alpha status. It tells you about a sense of dignity and neatness you don’t find in most of Today’s young people neither in Wal Mart’s humanoids.

No. She has the look of a woman exhausted and depressed because life sucked hairy balls. I also think by depression era standards, she was too tall and gangly to be thought of as a “Hottie”. Women with a little more meat on their bones (not fat) were more of the thing in those days. After all, most folks were pretty fucking hungry. Dont get me wrong. By todays standards I think she is very attractive. But then? Nah. That tall lanky look didnt catch on in a big way until much later. Think Lauren Bacall (simply stunning at 19) in “To have and have not” in 1944.

“I have posed family photos from the late 1800’s-early 1900’s, and NO ONE is smiling…. because photography was too young and no one knew what you were “supposed” to do when faced with a camera.”

That is part of the reason. But it was mostly because everyone had fucked up or no teeth in their heads. Remember, Dentistry was awful in those days with limited or NO anesthesia. If you wanted your teeth worked on you often went to the Barber! Most people avoided them like the plague unless they had too.

She was thin because she didn’t eat enough and worked in physical labor all day. She’s also eye-fucking the photographer, who she probably sees as a better possible meal-ticket than the one she’s with. Maybe it’s not desire you see in her eyes, but simple hunger.

As for him, his shoulders are hunched and he’s crossed his arms in front of his crotch defensively. It seems like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible. Not your typical alpha stance.

The woman in the picture is hunched over because she’s fucking depressed to be sleeping on a thin, dirty mattress placed directly on the ground, to have just had a cup of hot water for breakfast and to have a husband who seems just fine with this miserable life and probably won’t work hard enough to pull them out of it.

Crop that cocky dude out of the picture, and the woman looks just plain sad, with a hint of resentfulness toward the photographer for taking her picture in her shameful state.

Right on.

When I really LOOKED at her, she doesn’t look like a woman in love, she has the hunched over posture of a miserable (and perhaps bored) woman.

Anyway, would you guys have a problem if she sat with her back straight or at least not hunched over?

All this controversy and yet no one has suggested the reason is that the posture is a ‘not advertising’ posture. A woman who is ‘open for business’ will stand or sit with shoulders back, showing off (whether consciously or not) her breasts to potential suitors. This woman on the other hand looks like she would open up for him but no others. Notice also her hand and arm covering her exposed leg, reinforcing the message.

I found this a very sad picture. To me the woman has a dreamy look in her face. She is thinking she would rather have something better than what she has. There is far away look in her eyes. The man looks blissfully unaware of how little his wife cares for him and that she would rather be somewhere else.

All this controversy and yet no one has suggested the reason is that the posture is a ‘not advertising’ posture. A woman who is ‘open for business’ will stand or sit with shoulders back, showing off (whether consciously or not) her breasts to potential suitors. This woman on the other hand looks like she would open up for him but no others.

Really??? So anytime a woman sits up straight and doesn’t slouch, it means she’s advertising? Or does it also depend on the circumstances and setting?

I’m all for a husband and wife to knows their God given duties and roles, but that doesn’t include a wife’s role being to stay silent.

And no I’m not talking about nagging. “”

My dear , back then … women knew their role , their place and their station in the “food chain”.
Getting married was not a matter of choice but a matter of survival.
This did mean that often they were exploited , but life was tougher and choices were more limited for men and women alike.

The pendulum has now swung the other way … too far the other way.

We now have a generation of women that think that the characters from Sex and the City are real people leading real lives that women can aspire to and have for themselves; designer fashion included.

Most western women’s sense of entitlement is now often far in excess of what they have to offer a man as a partner or wife.

You want to bone her, because she is being all-feminine. She doesn’t have a girly-man for a husband and can rely on him to take care of business and she can revert to her natural state as a woman. Which is to be submissive and supportive to a strong masculine presence. You’re right, they are in a bad mess as of that picture, but you can tell he will take care of any challenge. She looks a little sad probably because she misses their house they used to have and wishes they had another one. Women live in the past and the future. This guy is totally living in the now.

Thank you for posting this. It gives me the opportunity to point out that you are the stupidest, most ignorant scumbag I have ever encountered. You should thank God that we are only meeting virtually, because I could rip your scrotum to shreds without batting an eyelash.

Both my parents were adults in the Depression. Here are a few of your bloopers:

“Despite this man’s pauper clothes (there was little peacocking during the Great Depression),”

There was as much “peacocking” during the Depression as during the Restoration. People dressed their best at any occasion. This occasion was a harvest, so he didn’t have a suit on.

“confident smirk and mischievous gaze of an alpha male.”

Otherwise known as a smile for the camera.

“What does he have to be happy about? Oh, his attractive wife. And by 1939 standards she is a real hottie.”

She is attractive. He also had a lot of things you don’t: the ability to love someone, and a country and a culture he was proud of.

“Shouldn’t he feel ashamed to be dragging her to a bean harvest?”

Of course not. A bean harvest was a joyous social occasion in pre-WWII rural America. Why would you even mention such a stupid thing? Your ignorance is abysmal.

“Not only that, but he’s obviously proud of the Social Security number tattooed on his arm. This is one step above waving your food stamps in the air like a certificate of accomplishment. What could be more beta than tattooing the government’s ownage of you on your arm?”

What am I saying? Abysmal doesn’t even describe it. The social security system saved men like him from destitution.

Do you know what it’s like to face starvation, you little piece of shit?

I wish I could beam you back to this man’s tent and have you say this to his face.

He’d leave you a greasy spot on the floor.

“Self-satisfaction will see a man through all sorts of tribulations.”

Self-satisfaction and a decent society that didn’t let him and his family starve.

” Radiating confidence, deserved or irrational, is what is most attractive to women…..”

Oh forget it. I am sick of you.

You piece of worthless shit. You are a complete fraud, an empty phony. You aren’t worth a sack of manure, which at least has value in this world.